Last Updated on Friday, 07 September 2012 07:05
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Wednesday, 29 August 2012 06:25

A hundred million years of fossil sex revealed, according to BBC News 18 June 2009. A new technique for examining the internal structure of fossils has enabled scientists to examine the reproductive organs of ostracod (tiny shellfish) fossils from the Santana Formation in Brazil. The fossils were embedded in rocks that also contained well preserved fish. Renate Matzke-Karasz of the Ludwig Maximilians University, Germany, used a technique called holotomography, to examine the fossils and found the ostracods had reproductive organs and giant sperm that were “remarkably similar” to those of living ostracods, which are characterized by having two sets of reproductive organs and males which produce giant sperm. Matzke-Karasz told BBC News: "It was very surprising that these structures were so similar to organs we know from modern ones. Now we know that it happened at least 100 million years ago - it developed quite early in the freshwater ostracods." The new technique should enable scientists to examine the internal structure of many more fossils. Matzke-Karasz commented: "This holotomography is so helpful; it could bring out much, much more of fossils which are all over the world in museums, buried in the collections."

Editorial Comment: The fact that the fossils were so well preserved that their internal organs and sperm were preserved shows they must have been suddenly and deeply buried and quickly preserved by rapid chemical penetration. They did not die in the water and slowly become entombed in mud. Ostracods that die in water today rapidly decay, leaving only their hard outer shells to sink to the bottom to be slowly buried. We hope this new technique will be used on many more fossils and look forward to seeing more evidence for rapid preservation. It is also no surprise to Creation Research that the fossil ostracods are the same as living ostracods – externally and internally. It is exactly the prediction scientists would make based on the Genesis data that ostracods were created by God to multiply after their kind. (Ref. crustaceans, preservation, fossilisation)